UNCA professor writes introspective novel

Author John Wood, a professor at
UNC-Asheville, has written his first novel.

Photo provided by UNC-Asheville

By James LoyFor the Times-News

Published: Sunday, June 30, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, June 27, 2013 at 6:36 p.m.

Parallel lives. The anthropologist and his wife featured in John Colman Wood’s tale of love and loss, “The Names of Things,” have worked on theirs for years. They are two beings joined by marriage, but deeply different in ways too numerous to count.

She is an artist, creative and introspective by nature, a social creature most comfortable in her own culture and when she’s surrounded by the bustle of other lives. He is an academic whose main creative outlet is his ethnographic research and who is willing to endure life in isolated and exotic places for the sake of his work. Introspection is not one of his strong points, although he might argue that he must understand human nature — including his own — because he studies it.

When she follows him, reluctantly one senses, to the Chalbi Desert of northwestern Kenya for research on the Dasse pastoralists, the sharp edges of their separate worlds are brought into dramatic focus. Content with his work and with life in a tiny settlement, he is blind to her increasing unhappiness.

Misunderstandings, and the moody silences that follow, become more frequent. Then during one of their infrequent trips out of the bush to the town of Marsabit, her frustrations come to a head.

She: This is nice. … Maybe I could move here. …

He: We’d hardly see each other. You might as well go home. …

She, after a pause: I’m thinking about it. … You might have considered me when you decided where you were going to work … where both of us would be happy. …

He: We agreed. …

She: We agreed to the continent, not the desert. … I imagined something like (Marsabit), where it’s green and normal and people don’t gawk or come out of nowhere and touch my hair.

He: Is it so bad (in the desert)? …

She: It wasn’t discussed. You wanted the desert. I couldn’t exactly tell you to work somewhere else. You might have asked. … My sister says I can stay with her (if I go home). …

He: Jesus. … Are you really leaving?

She: You’re the one who left.

He: What’s that mean?

She: Don’t you know?

Not long after, she does move from the little desert village of Maikona to the trading center of Marsabit, where she volunteers mornings at the local hospital and paints in the afternoon. Not being a nurse, she draws all of the menial tasks, changing beds, turning bodies, mopping up messes, comforting people as best she can.

One day at the hospital, she cuts herself slightly on a broken jar and then on her way home she stops to help a woman who has gashed herself while cutting wood by the roadside. Blood from the woman’s wound enters the cut on the artist’s finger and the die is cast.

Years later and home from Africa, she shows the first signs of illness: fever, aches, inexplicable sores. When she comes home with bad test results, she seeks comfort not from him, but from the familiarity of her studio. As the disease progresses, she gradually becomes homebound, her art dwindling to charcoal sketches done on a bed tray.

Throughout the downward spiral, he nurses her, now anxious to get into her head, to know what she is thinking and feeling. It is, however, too late, and the day comes when he is alone in all senses of the word, aware that his own nascent introspection came too late to share with her.

Then an unexpected thing happens. As he sorts out her sketchbooks one day, he makes a discovery that strikes at the very foundation of his memories of their marriage.

Drawings made during their time in the desert leave him wondering whether he really ever knew the person who was his wife, or the relationship that was their marriage. It prompts him to make one last journey to Africa, where he hopes to make sense of their love, his work and his life.

As he struggles to find peace in the African wilderness, he begins a sketchbook of his own, a belated link to his lost love. Now she is safe, he thinks. But from what?

He: I’m not sure. From this? From life? From me?

Alternating episodes from the lives of the anthropologist and his wife with descriptions of the rituals of the Dasse people, John Colman Wood has constructed an exquisite and memorable tale of humans’ social needs layered on top of our inescapable inner solitude.

About the author

Dr. John Colman Wood, a presenter at Blue Ridge Bookfest 2013, is an associate professor of anthropology at UNC-Asheville, where he has worked since 1999. From 2003-2004, he served as the interim director of the UNCA Africana Studies Program. Prior to joining the UNCA faculty, he was a newspaperman and worked for the Times-News, The Gainesville Sun and The New York Times. Since 1991, Wood has made numerous trips to northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia to live with and study the Gabra pastoralists (renamed the Dasse people in his book). “The Names of Things” is Wood’s first novel.

<p>Parallel lives. The anthropologist and his wife featured in John Colman Wood's tale of love and loss, “The Names of Things,” have worked on theirs for years. They are two beings joined by marriage, but deeply different in ways too numerous to count.</p><p>She is an artist, creative and introspective by nature, a social creature most comfortable in her own culture and when she's surrounded by the bustle of other lives. He is an academic whose main creative outlet is his ethnographic research and who is willing to endure life in isolated and exotic places for the sake of his work. Introspection is not one of his strong points, although he might argue that he must understand human nature — including his own — because he studies it.</p><p>When she follows him, reluctantly one senses, to the Chalbi Desert of northwestern Kenya for research on the Dasse pastoralists, the sharp edges of their separate worlds are brought into dramatic focus. Content with his work and with life in a tiny settlement, he is blind to her increasing unhappiness.</p><p>Misunderstandings, and the moody silences that follow, become more frequent. Then during one of their infrequent trips out of the bush to the town of Marsabit, her frustrations come to a head.</p><p>She: This is nice. … Maybe I could move here. …</p><p>He: We'd hardly see each other. You might as well go home. …</p><p>She, after a pause: I'm thinking about it. … You might have considered me when you decided where you were going to work … where both of us would be happy. …</p><p>He: We agreed. …</p><p>She: We agreed to the continent, not the desert. … I imagined something like (Marsabit), where it's green and normal and people don't gawk or come out of nowhere and touch my hair.</p><p>He: Is it so bad (in the desert)? …</p><p>She: It wasn't discussed. You wanted the desert. I couldn't exactly tell you to work somewhere else. You might have asked. … My sister says I can stay with her (if I go home). …</p><p>He: Jesus. … Are you really leaving?</p><p>She: You're the one who left.</p><p>He: What's that mean?</p><p>She: Don't you know?</p><p>Not long after, she does move from the little desert village of Maikona to the trading center of Marsabit, where she volunteers mornings at the local hospital and paints in the afternoon. Not being a nurse, she draws all of the menial tasks, changing beds, turning bodies, mopping up messes, comforting people as best she can.</p><p>One day at the hospital, she cuts herself slightly on a broken jar and then on her way home she stops to help a woman who has gashed herself while cutting wood by the roadside. Blood from the woman's wound enters the cut on the artist's finger and the die is cast.</p><p>Years later and home from Africa, she shows the first signs of illness: fever, aches, inexplicable sores. When she comes home with bad test results, she seeks comfort not from him, but from the familiarity of her studio. As the disease progresses, she gradually becomes homebound, her art dwindling to charcoal sketches done on a bed tray.</p><p>Throughout the downward spiral, he nurses her, now anxious to get into her head, to know what she is thinking and feeling. It is, however, too late, and the day comes when he is alone in all senses of the word, aware that his own nascent introspection came too late to share with her.</p><p>Then an unexpected thing happens. As he sorts out her sketchbooks one day, he makes a discovery that strikes at the very foundation of his memories of their marriage.</p><p>Drawings made during their time in the desert leave him wondering whether he really ever knew the person who was his wife, or the relationship that was their marriage. It prompts him to make one last journey to Africa, where he hopes to make sense of their love, his work and his life.</p><p>As he struggles to find peace in the African wilderness, he begins a sketchbook of his own, a belated link to his lost love. Now she is safe, he thinks. But from what?</p><p>He: I'm not sure. From this? From life? From me?</p><p>Alternating episodes from the lives of the anthropologist and his wife with descriptions of the rituals of the Dasse people, John Colman Wood has constructed an exquisite and memorable tale of humans' social needs layered on top of our inescapable inner solitude.</p><h3>About the author</h3>
<p>Dr. John Colman Wood, a presenter at Blue Ridge Bookfest 2013, is an associate professor of anthropology at UNC-Asheville, where he has worked since 1999. From 2003-2004, he served as the interim director of the UNCA Africana Studies Program. Prior to joining the UNCA faculty, he was a newspaperman and worked for the Times-News, The Gainesville Sun and The New York Times. Since 1991, Wood has made numerous trips to northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia to live with and study the Gabra pastoralists (renamed the Dasse people in his book). “The Names of Things” is Wood's first novel.</p>